Sunday, January 29, 2006

My representative in the House is Jan Schakowsky of Evanston, IL, pictured above. Earlier today, Jan was probably at the Democratic Party of Evanston's slatemaking session. But rather pondering just who is the most qualified to gain the local party's endorsement for Cook County Water Reclamation District Commissioner, this Robert Novak column in Sunday's Chicago Sun-Times probably dominated her thoughts.

From that column:

House Republicans, wounded by lobbyist scandals, have called on the House Ethics Committee to investigate more than 10 Democratic members headed by Jan Schakowsky of Illinois and Nydia Velazquez of New York.

Schakowsky's husband, consumer advocate Robert Creamer, has been indicted in a check-kiting scheme. (My note: Last summer Creamer pleaded guilty to related charges and is awaiting sentencing.) The Republicans contend that because she signed tax returns with him, that she should be investigated by the ethics committee. Velazquez is accused of violating House ethics guidelines by using her congressional office to endorse Judge Margarita Lopez Torres as Brooklyn Surrogate Court judge.

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comments:

So, allow me, if I may...co-signing tax documents and, what, using the wrong piece of stationary to endorse a local candidate is somehow the same as the wholesale influence peddling outed in the Republican Abramoff scandal. And the three sources are the one guy whose column outed a CIA operative but who wasn't even called to testify, and two blogs.

This goes to show that the Democratic party and the GOP are pretty much equally corrupt, with the party in power being a bit more corrupt due to more opportunities. The only way to truly minimize the graft and corruption is not to just pass more ethics reforms (although they are needed), but to also send less money to Washington (and Springfield) so that there is less opportunity for corruption.

Hey, I'm interested in the disparate opinions found on this site, but I don't think it's necessary that you play on the words "More on Schakowsky" to call the Congressman a "moron." Express your opinions freely, but do so with respect. Or spell check your darn work.

Maybe you don't think it's a big deal, but I'd hate to see that being pulled up in front of one of those special federal grand juries downtown.

That's the type of red flag issue that leads to lots & lots & lots of questions being asked, and those are the types of questions that can really ruin a politician's day.

This one could get really sticky for Jan, because the defenses eventually boil down to either incompetence or dishonesty, and on the matter of federal taxes to top it off. Just hope they actually ended up paying a lot more in taxes than they really should have.

Wow, the GOP is desperate. What a clear attempt to redirect attention from the leadership's own massive corruption scandal. (re: millions and millions of dollars bilked from tribes, selling the drug plan to the highest bidder) This is old news, and Jan has never been involved in any way, this is just another typical right wing smear.

True, a lot of Dems are duplicitous, but don't kid yourself into thinking the Republicans are at all any better. You definitely have to vote for individual candidates, not for the party label, if you want to get good people in government, because there are swindlers at all ends of the political spectrum.

The Republicans are in an entrenched culture of corruption and they are going to have to dig out of it. Spin it any way you like, but eventually they are going to get hosed by this Abramoff deal.

What makes this funny to me is the fact that George Ryan is on trial right now and you're here lamely whining about J-Schak and some non-existent probe - a Republican fishing expedition that is another attempt to shade the issues in a conservative light.

Don't you guys have some gay marriages and border jumpers to stop? I thought that was what was wrong with our country.

Unfortunately, Schakowsky has no Democratic opposition in the Primary Election. Whoever wins the Republican Primary would be hard-pressed to get more than 38-39% of the vote even if she were indicted.

If she stepped down, the Democratic committeemen of the congressional district would choose her successor. In other words, six or seven persons would choose the Congressman, while the rest of us would continue to be screwed.

Don't blame me for this messy situation. I was pleading for anyone to file against her in the Democratic Primary. Unfortunately, the political cancer that Schakowsky and company represents in the 9th CD has as one of its symptoms the destruction of political backbones in virtually anyone who has the fiscal resources to become a candidate against someone in their cabal (in my own case, I am far too poor to make a run for office).

This is why we have no one to challenge that disgrace of a State Senator and State Central Committeewoman Carol Ronen. Ronen, who may well be Governor blagojevich's chief apologist in the General Assembly, won a State House seat in 1992 on Carol Moseley-Braun's skirt-tales, ousting Lee Preston (one of the few truly oustanding members of the legislature) in a campaign that still reeks and stinks of hypocrisy 14 years later. When Senator Art Berman bailed out of the General Assembly in mid-term, Ronen was appointed to succeed him (despite having accomplished nothing of note in Springfield).

I should point out that I was Ronen's precinct captain for five years in the 1980s. During that time, I got more cooperation and courtesy from the sibling of an indicted Enron executive than I ever got from Ronen.

With people like Schakowsky in key posts in the House Democratic leadership, you can probably expect the GOP to keep its majority in the coming elections, as the Democrats shoot themselves in the foot yet again. In the meantime, people like ronen who continue to serve on the Democratic State Central Committee only end up making it eaier for Republican fundraisers to scare up additional dollars for their campaign warchests.

What we need is a complete cleansing of the local Democratic power structure. Unfortuantely, that will not happen in 2006.

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